nab review_nab 24/04/2014 12:17 Page 2
elegates arriving in Las Vegas
for this year’s show were
greeted with surprise news of
M&A activity involving four significant
sector players.
Software and networking solutions
specialist Imagine Communications
announced
it was to
acquire
Digital
Rapids, an
innovator in IP and file-based media
processing solutions and software-defined
workflow management technologies.
Charlie Vogt, CEO of Imagine
Communications, said the addition of Digital
Rapids’ advancements in
software-based workflow
management and
transcoding strategically
complemented Imagine’s
pillars of innovation and
rounded out its capabilities.
According to Imagine, the
acquisition will also create
the world’s most
comprehensive portfolio of
processing and compression
solutions for TV Everywhere.
Media Asset Management
(MAM) solutions, software
and services specialist Dalet
Digital Media Systems also
announced it is to acquire
AmberFin, a specialist in video ingest,
complex media manipulation, transcoding
and quality control (QC) solutions. According
to Dalet, the acquisition significantly
broadens its product offerings, which are
built around an open, IT-centric technology
framework. It affirms the company’s
dominance in MAM and media workflow
management by creating end-to-end
solutions that include comprehensive MAM
capabilities along with state-of-the art image
processing, media transcoding and
distribution.
“This acquisition allows us to offer the
industry the most advanced level of workflow
options. AmberFin has been at the forefront
in mastering media, including transcoding
and video quality control. The company has
spearheaded many widely adopted industry
standards such as MXF and AS-02. Its talent
and expertise directly complement Dalet’s
strengths in enterprise MAM-driven
solutions,” said David Lasry, CEO of Dalet.
BUSINESS. While such industry
D
of TV compression for Ericsson. “As
providers strive to address consumer
demand for TV Anywhere, we are focused on
helping them make the right choices with
their multiscreen video processing
deployments.”
“Elemental’s view of the future of video
aligns well with Ericsson’s vision of the
Networked Society where there will be 50
billion connected devices by 2020, 15 billion
of which will be
video enabled,”
said Sam
Blackman, CEO
and co-founder
consolidation was the chatter on the show
for Elemental. “The integration of Elemental
floor, it was business as usual for the
solutions into the Ericsson platform will help
majority of other exhibitors, who were
enable pay-TV operators, content owners,
gearing up for the TV Everywhere, multibroadcasters and sports programmers to
screen, cloud-based 4K/Ultra-HD future
transform their traditional TV businesses
into multiscreen successes
across the globe.”
CLOUD. Further
developments in
Virtualised Video
Processing came from
Cisco, who announced
plans to virtualise and
cloud-enable the video
processing elements of its
Videoscape TV service
delivery platform, taking
“Now is the time to start
another step in the Evolved
building the necessary
Services Platform strategy
ecosystems and libraries of
compelling UHDTV
unveiled earlier in 2014. In
content.”
addition, the company
Gordon Smith, NAB
announced enhancements
to the Videoscape AnyRes
predicted by many observers.
encoding solution to support full-frame rate
Software-defined video solutions
4K/Ultra High Definition (UltraHD) content
specialist Elemental Technologies confirmed
for higher quality and the High Efficiency
that its video processing software runs on
Video Coding (HEVC) standard for more
multiple processing architectures including
optimised delivery.
appliances, blade solutions, virtual machines
Joe Cozzolino, SVP, GM, service provider
and the cloud, freeing customers around the
video infrastructure, said that Cisco’s
world to optimise economically
customers needed a radically simpler and
infrastructure for their particular video
more agile infrastructure as they seek to
processing application.
deliver new video experiences, and stay
It also revealed that MobiTV, a specialist
ahead of the rapid growth in video
in enabling delivery of live and on-demand
processing options and formats. “Virtualised
TV Everywhere, is using Elemental video
Video Processing enables our customers to
processing solutions to support its cloudfocus on delivering better video services,
based video delivery platform, and that
faster and more cost effectively, and frees
Elemental’s video processing software is fully
them from the burden of buying, configuring
integrated into the Ericsson Virtualized
and re-configuring individual pieces of
Encoding solution. “By expanding Ericsson
hardware. As the proven industry leader in
Virtualized Encoding to also support
cloud and virtualisation, we are using these
Elemental software encoding, we are
technologies to empower our customers with
enabling TV service providers to efficiently
far greater agility in deploying compelling TV
address the growing complexity of
experiences, while